Next day I was waiting outside Mr. Sharma’s office. He was busy in a meeting. I had been waiting for over an hour, when the meeting finally ended. As people came out of his office, I noticed that Akbar Khan was also amongst them. Noticing me, Akbar Khan and his friends laughed at me, in a way mocking that I was nothing in front of them. In a way, this was true. Akbar Khan came near me, and said,

“You will spend your entire life going around offices, but I will never let your dream come true.”

I was burning with anger, but controlled my emotions.

“You are the reason why my daughter is not in this world. I will destroy you.” He threatened me.

“You have already destroyed my world. Because Rihana was the world to me. Now it doesn’t matter whether I live or die. I just want to fulfill her last desire.” I said.

“And I will never let your dream come true. Got it?” Akbar Khan left, fuming.

It was a strange enmity between Akbar Khan and myself. I wanted to fulfill his daughter’s last wish at any cost, and he didn’t want to let me do it, at any cost. I had understood that there was no point in meeting Mr. Sharma, as he would also say ‘no’. But for Rihana’s sake, I was ready for that.

Before I could enter his office, Mr. Sharma came out.

He was about fifty years of age, a very fit person, wearing Kurta Pyjama, tilak on his forehead, wearing spectacles with thick glasses. Interestingly, he was wearing a ‘khadaau’ (a wooden footwear). Normally, a person wearing such clothes and a tilak on his forehead is not physically fit, but he was really fit. When he saw me, he said,

“I didn’t know that you have some issues with Akbar Khan. Now there is no point in talking about anything, son. Please try elsewhere.”

He was calling me son, and also breaking my heart. I didn’t mind his refusal at all. I had lost all hope when I had seen Akbar Khan in his office… just wanted to hear a ‘no’ from his mouth.

After Rihana’s death, I had forgotten to smile. Everyday my smoking habit was getting worse. In fact, I had become a chain smoker.

I had been to practically every single publisher in Delhi, and had got same answer in negative. Mr. Bajaj was the only one who had not said a ‘no’ directly, but his conditions were such, that it amounted to a ‘no’.

I had already broken the TV in my room, so to read news, I sometimes used to visit a nearby tea-stall. I was sitting in the stall one day, with tea and cigarette, when my eyes caught a news headline on the Newspaper lying on the table. It was something like,

“Madly in love with Laila, Majnu is still alive”

It was a strange headline, and I wanted to read the full news. This was an incident of Vasant Kunj, a locality in New Delhi. To please her girlfriend, a boy named Rohan had written a letter with his own blood. Now he was hospitalized.

For others it could be news, but for me it was much more than that. I had got an idea to make a name for myself.